Welcome to week 137.

We’re looking at farming again today, this time by adding the new ‘Farmers Satchel’ which is a tier 2 upgrade on the Seed Pouch.

This has all the benefits of the Seed Pouch, but with more slots and uses than just seeds that makes it more useful when working with a large amount of crops.

We’re also talking today about the upcoming Prometheus Map Expansion, with details about how the mini-map works in this new ‘Null Sector’.

Jump in and have a read.

• Medicine crafted on the person will head straight into the Medicine Satchel
  
• Fixed spoil timer showing {0} instead of the correct time
  
• Reduced spacing in the objectives list to better-fit missions with many objectives

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We’re adding a new ‘Farmers Satchel’ as a new item you can place in your inventory and use for extra seed storage.

The Farmers Satchel has 16 slots, considerably more than the Tier 1 Seed Pouch. This is crafted at Tier 2, and can be viewed as a direct upgrade. It can also hold fertilizer, making it substantially more useful for farming compared to the seed pouch which is useful mainly for foraging alone.

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We’ve entered the closed testing phase of our Prometheus Map expansion while we iron out some bugs that have cropped up. This is likely to take a few weeks and depending on the results, we may enter a stage of wider testing amongst the community.

This map expansion comes with five new missions that have you venture across the wasteland. The entire area is known as the ‘Null Sector’ and is a complete dark zone that requires a new item to map out. This won’t naturally become visible on your mini-map as other explored areas of the map would. Find out more about this next week.

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We’re also working on a new World Boss in Prometheus which will be found in the swamp biome.

While we’re not releasing too many details yet, we thought we’d share a picture of one of its smaller forms to give you a few nightmares in the meantime.

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Next week we’ll be adding more firepower to Icarus with a new Tier 3 pistol which can load 6 bullets at a time. The CHAC pistol will also be adjusted to take into account the new Pistol's ammo capacity.

The old one shot pistol is being moved to Tier 2 along with the addition of some new crude ammo crafted at the same tier.

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https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

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New Content
[expand type=details expanded=false]

• Unlocking Farmers Satchel
  
• Fixed T2 Seed Bag and Medicine Bag not auto gathering applicable seeds when gathered or medicines crafted on player

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand type=details expanded=false]

• Fixed Confirm button on Operation Selection dialogue being untranslated
  
• Fixed a few typos in modifier states
  
• Fixed spoil timer showing {0} instead of correct time
  
• Fixed Industrial Dresser not benefting from extra storage talent
  
• Slightly reduced spacing between quest objectives for larger missions. Increased width of quest box slightly to fit more text also
  
• Fixing Build Error with Talents

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details expanded=false]

• Tweaks to RockGolem BT. Fixed RockGolem crazy big attack radius. Fixed RockGolem slowing down before hitting walls
  
• Additions to RockGolem BT. Added WIP RockGolem barrier wall BP
  
• Setting up Slug Boss Blueprints
  
• Setting up Slug Boss Items, adding slug vestiage
  
• Adding Lava hunter boss drop items
  
• Fixing Lava hunter new items to use the correct item inputs
  
• Added art assets for the golem core item
  
• Updating ice breaker scratch sound to match slowed down animation montage. Now is on a seamless loop with continuous sound playback enabled to randomize the exact timing of the scratches
  
• Added GUN_Pistol_T3
  
• Added test map for RockGolem. Added BB-based move acceptance radius to MoveToTargetActorAdvanced BTTask. Tweaks to RockGolem BT
  
• Setting up Scorpion Boss Blueprints
  
• Setting up Lava Hunter Boss Blueprints
  
• Setting up Scorpion Throne/Hanging/Tail Item Setup
  
• General Setup of Items for Scorpion & Lava Hunter ready for meshes and stat pass
  
• Adding final layer to current ice breaker setup. Darker movement audio. Fixed a few movement sockets not being correct, distancing adjustments and a few other improvements
  
• Added spider nests and added it to olympus spawn zone (dev locked). Fixed spider ranged attack spawning at <0,0,0>
  
• Added art assets for the lava hunter horn
  
• Changing Hubble Feature Level to Dangerous Horizons
  
• Fixing Sandworm Trophy Recipes and doing a quick pass on all new sandworm recipes & items
  
• Setting up Planetary Items for Sandworm and Black Wolf, adding item setup, icons, bp's etc
  
• Setting up prototype boss blueprint tree
  
• Adding ice breaker roar event and notifys. Other small adjustments and tweaks to ice breaker
  
• Added slug slime art assets to the project
  
• Added more montages for RockGolem. Added more simple behaviours to RockGolem BT. RockGolem tongue no longer has collision
  
• Adjustments to some ice breaker idle audio to remove artifacts of pitching. also adjustments to movement sounds rolloff distances etc
  
• Added Slug Rubber skin art assets
  
• Adjustments to ice breaker. adding move, move med and move fast audio and events and anim notifys
  
• Additions to the ice breaker. Adding idle scratch audio and notify. Further movement sounds to come
  
• Added art assets for three scorpion boss trophies to the project
  
• First pass of explosion sequence for when the boss splits, still needs timing tweaks and fx added
  
• Tweaks to RockGolem roll. Re-named BP_IceBreaker_Path to BP_Boss_Spline_Path
  
• Adding first pass ice breaker vocalisations idle states and adjustments to footsteps etc
  
• Added AnimBP for RockGolem. Added Locomotions BSs, Montages, Data setup, character for RockGolem. Added simple BT to test out RockGolem's spline-based roll movement
  
• First Pass trace asset commit for rock golem rig, textures and animations, additional armor textures to follow
  
• Correcting wrong foot for RF stomp audio
  
• Updates and improvements to ice breaker footsteps volumes and distances and eq curves
  
• Changed colour of Arctic Bat's point light and reduced intensity. Bats will now react and attack target that damages their nest
  
• Fixed a bug where the mammoth corpse would show the incorrect mesh as its corpse
  
• Fixed a bug where the mammoth corpse would show the incorrect mesh as its corpse
  
• Fixing Build Error with Talents
  
• Removed unused override location for spit attack

[/expand]

Welcome to week 136.

This week we’re implementing comprehensive changes to how seeds and crops interact with biomes and weather patterns.

One of Icarus' unique foundations is the immersive weather system, which requires genuine consideration in many decisions you make including building materials, biome selection and even structural design. Biomes add unique resource pools and availability, along with impacts to survivability and ailments.

One area of the game which has not been affected by these impacts, however, is farming. While rainfall amounts and glasshouse bonuses have a modest effect, it has largely ignored many of the other impacts that are prevalent on other game features.

We are expanding on that this week with biomes, extreme storms, freezing temperatures and exposure now playing a part in the crop growth simulation, making this feel more natural and connected to the rest of the game.

This includes new tiers of shovels and crop plots hat provide different tiers of storm resistance to mitigate the impact of storms, and the effect that more inhospitable biomes have on their success rate.

We’ve also got updates on some upcoming World Bosses on Prometheus, and next week's Farmers Satchel.

Jump in and have a read.

• Crops planted with a shovel no longer incur a negative modifier added to crop growth
  
• Sunlight now increases growth speed by 20%, with no sunlight reducing speed by 20% instead of 50% (this will be replaced by the Greenhouse bonus when there are glass building pieces nearby)
  
• The Kiwi trophy can now be placed on the ground as intended

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Seeds will now have preferred biomes. Crops will have more success growing in environments with favorable conditions, and certain crops will incur large debuffs if they’re not appropriate. For example, nothing will be able to grow outdoors in the Arctic.

However, unsuitable conditions can be negated by building greenhouses using the Glass building piece.

The impact on openly planted seeds in each biome is as follows:

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Alongside the impact of biomes on crops, the quality of crops will now play a role in farming.

Crops now have a quality which will be slowly reduced during storms. Once a crop's quality reaches 0 it will become withered and unable to bear any fruit. This is a slow process and it will take multiple storms to fully reduce a crop's quality to zero. Outside of storms the quality of a crop will recovery slowly if the crop is watered. When harvesting crops, yield will be scaled based on the crop quality after any talents and stat bonuses have been applied.

Crop plots and mounds have a new property which lets you know what tier of storms will not effect the quality of the crop, as shown in the table below. If the tier of a crop plot / dirt mound is higher or equal to the tier of storm, no crop quality will be reduced. In addition to the crop plots having high resistance as you move up the tech tree, we’ve also introduced new shovels that allow for the creation of better dirt mounds so that their crops can survive higher-tier storms.

We have also added two new fertilizers craftable on the herbalism bench at T2. One focused on crop resistance, which will reduce the quality loss of crops in storms, and another focused on recovery which will drastically increase the recovery rate of crops.

Originally posted by author:

If your game is set to easy (either Mission or Open World), these new changes will not impact you, and no quality loss to your crops will occur.

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As mentioned, crop plots, dirt mounds and shovels have now been ‘tierified’.

One important change is that from this week, dirt mounds no longer incur the -50% growth speed debuff. This has been completely removed.


The weather forecast will now show what tier of storms can happen during certain periods, and different environments will also show what tier of storms you can expect. There is a small chance that tiers either one above or below can spawn during that forecast also.

While dirt mounds have more bonuses than crop plots making them suitable for mass farming, crop plots are focused on automation rather than individual boosts, while mounds are focused on buffs and mass farming.

Mounds that are created with the animal plow are equivalent to the iron shovel dirt mound.

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We’re currently working on enabling a final World Boss to spawn on the Prometheus map after completing the last story mission. This will spawn in the Volcanic Biome. We’re also working on adding another new world boss that will spawn in the swamp areas of Prometheus.

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Next week we’ll be adding a new Tier 3 Farmers Satchel, along with any necessary fixes or changes from this week's comprehensive list of adjustments. Remember to keep giving us your feedback via Feature Upvote (linked on the title screen).

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https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

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New Content
[expand type=details]

• Adding in Crop / Biome / Weather Interactions
  
• Seeds / Crops now have optimal growth biomes, when they are not planted in the correct biome they will suffer a biome specific penalty, for example nothing with grow unshelted in the arctic
  
• Seed / Crop un-obtimal biome debuffs can be countered by growing crops inside a greenhouse
  
• Crop plots / Mounds now have a tier associated with them (shown as a stat) and their crops will take damage if they are out in the open and a storm of higher than their specified tier occurs
  
• Adding Upgrade Code for Existing Dirty Mounds so they are assigned the correct tier
  
• Adding new logic when placing dirt mounds or ploughing them with an animal cart so they have the correct stats and modifiers applied
  
• Adding UI on Seeds so they display their optimal biome
  
• Adding UI to crop plots to display their tier and storm resist
  
• Adjusting stat descriptions for crop plot / mound tiers
  
• Reassigning stats of shovels & crop plots so they match their associated storm tiers
  
• Unlocking all shovels at t3/4 and workshop
  
• Fixing shovel dig as it was assigning the wrong dirt mound modifiers
  
• Crop Plots / Mounds can now be inspected without seeds
  
• Adding new modifier on crop plots / mounds if deployed in the arctic and not in a greenhouse so players know crops will die
  
• Fixed ability to spawned ploughed dirt mounds and added new modifier to reflect
  
• Adjusting Item Popup so the optimal seed biomes are not shown for every item
  
• Updating Item Rewards for digging
  
• Swapped Damage Effect for Ground Dust
  
• Adding ability for seeds to have multiple optimal biomes
  
• Adjusting crop plot tool tip location so its easier to read
  
• Adding tier information to crop plot tooltip
  
• Missed files from last commit
  
• Fixing issue where yields of 0 can be possible when the yield modifier of crops was less than 1.0
  
• Crops will take damage in storms slowly if they are not the correct tier for the storm rather than instant death, this will regen slowly when not in a storm, this is seperate from the crop plots health
  
• Added small effect for when crops take damage
  
• Fixing Dead State Collisions for the Squash, Yeast, Carrot, Kumara
  
• Adding in world tooltip for crop plots to show storm damage and growth status
  
• Update dug hole modifiers for better desciption
  
• Update Shovel to Iron Shovel
  
• Update hand made hole to only reduce crop growth by 25%
  
• Fixed build errors - AIGrowth stat enum name changed/Itemstatic missclick
  
• Adding audio for crop plants taking damage and being destroyed. BP imp
  
• Fixed a typo in the dirt mound modifier
  
• Lots of improvements and additioanl layers and tweaks to the ice breakers footsteps. Multiple events. No longer linked to footstep event for better control
  
• Update tier display on building pieces
  
• Update stat wording for crop plot tiers
  
• Adding Storm Resistance to Crop Plot Inspection UI
  
• Update crop preferred biomes
  
• Increased The Excavator workshop shovel price and storm tier
  
• Update UI text for storm resistances and tiers, and related modifiers
  
• Crop plots crops will take 2 damage every 10 seconds if their storm survival tier is lower than the crop plot or mound tier
  
• Crop plot crops will regain 1 health every 10 seconds while not in a storm and they are watered
  
• While on an Easy difficulty crop plots will not take damage in storms
  
• Removed destructible mesh from the crop plot damage so only a particle effect plays now when storm damage occurs
  
• Removed negative modifiers from using dirt mounts & adjusted tierified dirt mound stats
  
• Fixing issue where you could not dig up dirt / sand / ice with a shovel
  
• Adding Modifier Sections to Blueprint and Workshop Tooltips
  
• Modifying wording on crop plot tool tips
  
• Added new UMG that collects all building pieces/deployables/active mounts and displays them next to how many we recommend before performance is expected to slow down
  
• Adding storm tier images to crop plot tool tips

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand type=details]

• Updated credits section
  
• Kiwifruit recipes now use Mature Coconuts instead of Ripe Coconuts, giving players a bit more time on their decay to use them
  
• Fixed Kiwi trophy being unable to be placed on the ground (and able to be placed on a wall)
  
• CONCEALMENT: Fixed collection objectives being set to 0 requirements when not on normal difficulty

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details]

• Added mission text for ASHLANDS and ICESHEET missions
  
• Setup PRO_D_Research mission steps
  
• First pass of IceBreaker implementation
  
• Added projectile attack to the spider
  
• Changed texture group for IceBreaker textures, allowing them to be 4K. Added additional IceBreaker idle/attack animations to engine
  
• DROVER: Moved quest locations, fixed completion state
  
• CARAVAN, DROVER: Add locations and update quest steps to use base classes. Fix some collision for quest actors
  
• IceBreaker can now properly navigate on unloaded world tiles.
  
• Fixed issue with BTS_SweepBoneDamage that was causing actors to be damaged more than once during the cooldown period
  
• |Move Aerosol Emitter active state to single bool, for audio and particle sync
  
• COMPOSITION: Moved crafting unlock/lock to their particular objectives
  
• COMPOSITION: Added dialogue triggers
  
• CARAVAN: Setup dialogue and fixed some setups
  
• CARAVAN and COMPOSITION: Setup briefing objectives
  
• Added IK CtrlRig for IceBreaker (used up to LOD 1)
  
• IceBreaker now uses it's new idle animations. Increased blend time between various IceBreaker loco anims
  
• CARAVAN: Update quest steps / logic and locations
  
• Added new icons for character creation redesign screen
  
• Added further functioanality to the mammoth. Mammoth now doesnt automatically agro to the player but waits to percieve first.
  
• Arctic bats adjusted to spawn more the less ice armor chunks
  
• DROVER: Implement initial quest setup and logic / requirements
  
• First lot of WIP assets for the ice breaker footsteps. Nowhere near finished atm
  
• Adding aerosol emitter audio event and BP imp
  
• DROVER: Add dialogue and fixes for mission steps
  
• Update collision on snap actors to match if mesh is hidden
  
• Update Ice Sheet spawn map
  
• Adjustments to ice breaker audio footstep notifys. And adding shake notify to the slams
  
• Adding new Wiget for displaying tier on crop plots
  
• Added montages and notify setups for most Ape attacks / behaviours
  
• Add Prometheus part 2 mission recipes
  
• ABYSS: Clear mission debuffs and recipes on completion
  
• Setup Aerosol Emitter to be set active when first placed for visual and audio effects

[/expand]